A CHARITY was accused today of rigging its public vote for its MP of the Year competition to prevent Jeremy Corbyn from winning.

The Patchwork Foundation runs the annual “non-partisan” competition to “celebrate and recognise” MPs who have “gone above and beyond to champion underrepresented and disadvantaged communities.”

But this year’s public vote will be scrapped “due to irregularities in the voting count,” the foundation said, and only the panel of judges’ decision will be announced.

The Morning Star asked the charity to explain what the “irregularities in the voting count” were. A spokesperson replied that “an irregularity in the vote means our results are inconclusive.”

They said that the results of the people’s choices for the Labour Party, Conservative Party and “other party” categories would not be announced.

Mr Corbyn’s son Tommy Corbyn said that the charity ditched the results because “the wrong MP won.”

And London Young Labour chair Artin Giles, who is also Harrow East Labour chair, said: “Jeremy Corbyn is so dangerous that they even have to rig such a meaningless vote to stop him from winning.”

Islington North MP Mr Corbyn had the Labour whip withdrawn last month after speaking out in response to an Equality & Human Rights Commission report on Labour’s handling of anti-semitism complaints.

He said that under his leadership of Labour, “the scale of the problem [of anti-semitism in the Labour Party] was dramatically overstated for political reasons.”

The Star asked the foundation whether the people’s vote was cancelled because Mr Corbyn was likely to win, and if a win by Mr Corbyn was voided due to his suspension, but it did not answer these questions. The foundation’s website says that MPs under investigation or suspended would not be considered in the competition.

The award this year was sponsored by tax auditing and advice firm KPMG. KPMG is part of the Atos group, which ran much-criticised work-capability assessments (WCA) of disabled people for the Tory government.

Disability-rights activist and trade unionist Paula Peters predicted in July that KPMG “will not allow Mr Corbyn to win” and that she would not vote.

Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell agreed with Ms Peters. He said: “I do not want to contribute to KPMG’s and hence Atos’s public-relations campaigns when I recall the lives lost and human suffering caused by the brutal WCA administered by Atos and the role KPMG has played in various corporate scandals.”

In a letter to a number of press outlets today, Jewish members of Islington North Constituency Labour Party expressed their “devastation” over Mr Corbyn’s suspension and called for his immediate reinstatement.